


gimme five

by asbestosghost



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, financially adept Dex headcanon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 08:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10486533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asbestosghost/pseuds/asbestosghost
Summary: “You know I could pay your fines, right?” Nursey asks, his eyes trained on the fiver Dex freely dumped in the sin bin.“I’m not about to squeeze a sugar daddy for five goddamn dollars,” Dex huffs. “I’m your boyfriend, not the IRS.”Or, how Dex games the sin bin.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this headcanon from [dexnurseyheadcanons](http://dexnurseyheadcanons.tumblr.com/): Once Dex and Nursey move into the Haus Dex becomes a lot more publicly affection with Nursey because he’s saving enough money by living off campus to afford fines. ([original post](https://asbestosghost.tumblr.com/post/158917309192/headcanon))
> 
> I took this to what felt like its logical conclusion.

“You know I could pay your fines, right?” Nursey asks, his eyes trained on the fiver Dex freely dumped in the sin bin.

“I’m not about to squeeze a sugar daddy for five goddamn dollars,” Dex huffs. “I’m your boyfriend, not the IRS.”

The smell of bacon mixes heavily with the pancakes Bitty made minutes earlier; the whole morning is warm with light flooding through the kitchen windows. Though his attention was mostly fixed on his laptop screen, Dex could usually sense when Nurse was coming back in from an early morning Annie’s run—something about the smell of the coffee, the way his clunky feet stomped out snow on the way in. He’d chosen to lazily feed Nurse a square of pancake once he was in range, and pull away from the code on his screen long enough to plant a kiss on Nurse’s cheek. Chowder didn’t notice until Nurse garbled an “mm, chofcorate schip” mid-chew—rather than shouting “FINE” at his fellow frogs’ cuter moments, C had taken to simply pushing the jar over to them with a never-hidden grin. (Today, he nudged it into Dex’s arm with a badly-stifled giggle.)

Nursey gestures with the two coffee cups in both hands. “You say that like I don’t get you coffee at least twice a week.”

“But you’d do that anyway,” Dex says, hooking his elbow around Nurse’s to grab one of the coffee cups. Nurse snorts and mirrors the gesture, linking their arms such that both can drink from their own cups with their faces close together. It would theoretically be a rad-looking, Nordic-style toast, if the coffee wasn’t still piping hot.

“Shit,” Nursey coughs, puffing over his tongue to try and relieve the burning while Dex cackles at him. “That’s why we stopped doing that one.”

“If y’all want to keep pulling this weird Game of Thrones courtship, may I suggest feeding the pig?” Bitty says, prodding the fine jar once. For the sake of true irony, he plants the plate of bacon to its immediate left.

“Nope,” Dex replies immediately, grinning and typing something in a spreadsheet before shutting his laptop. “I put in five already. Chowder’s my witness.”

“Chowder?” Bitty asks, swiveling his head toward C.

Shark boy sighs. “Yeah, he did, at um… 10:05, right? So he’s got until 11:05 before he’s open again.”

With Bitty, Chowder, Dex, and Nursey all in pretty committed relationships and living in the Haus together, they were likely to all go broke if they hounded each other for fines at every turn. So a deal was struck—anyone who put five dollars in the sin bin for a relationship-related fine was free from further fines for the next hour, as long as they didn’t pull anything egregious.

Which meant Dex had a full hour of public Nursey cuddles that he had to act on _right now_ , on the shitty couch, watching shitty Saturday morning cartoons, and having a wonderfully un-shitty start to the weekend. He practically shoves the rest of a pancake in Nurse’s mouth as he pushes his fellow d-man into the living room, constructing a hodgepodge of breakfast foods on a plate to satisfy both their crazy appetites.

“Have you even seen any of Game of Thrones, Bitty?” Chowder asks as Dex half-jogs to the living room.

Bitty makes a face. “I’ve seen enough of what that man thinks of eating. I love food, Chowder, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t consider myself a food-sexual.”

 

* * *

 

Sunday finds them with a similar post-fine safe hour in the early afternoon, out on the reading room doing homework. Normally the cruddy wifi reception would be enough to send them both back indoors, but Dex’s programming assignment is offline and Nursey had enough reading to not get bored of it.

Every so often, though, when Nursey looks over at Dex, he finds Dex worrying over a spreadsheet. There’s a shocking number of formulas, sub-sheets…

“Hey, when did you say you were free in May, again?” Dex asks, out of the blue.

“Uh, any time after finals should be free. You planning something?”

Dex bites down on a lip to keep from smiling. “Maybe. Just don’t plan anything second week of May.”

“Because _you’re_ planning something?” Nurse repeats.

“Maybe,” Dex repeats back, and checks his watch. He pulls another five-dollar bill out of his wallet, after wrestling it out of the back pocket of his jeans. “When you head back in for water, can you give this to Chowder?”

“How do you know I’m getting water?”

“Because you’re a thirsty goddamn fish.”

“And how do you know you’re gonna need the five?” Nurse asks, amused.

Dex holds a finger up— _wait_. And then Derek sees him point out a pair of yellow running shoes coming into view from behind the tree, and he’s able to register the idea that it must be Jack coming to visit when suddenly Dex is there, in his space, teeth over Nurse’s lip. Derek feels the weird dirty gravel of the reading room dig into his elbows as Dex leans him down, shifting his palms around the tiny rocks. Their mouths collide—a little more openly than normal, and a little more forcefully too, when Derek stops to think about it. Still, he lets Will block the sun, and bite his lips, and breathe his air, and tongue over his teeth without complaint, because Will in his honesty is far better at this form of physical free verse than Tennyson could ever hope to be.

“Should I bring the jar up, or are you coming down?” comes the voice from below, a little touched with laughter.

“Hey Jack,” Dex calls, surfacing. He’s got a wry smile on his face that Derek would have wanted to kiss off a few months ago, but now he can’t bring himself to wish anything that would tear the smile off Will’s face.

“I’m coming down,” Nurse groans as he sits up, rubbing the pebbles off his arms.

“Don’t trip on the window this time,” Will says, handing Derek both his glass and the bill.

 

* * *

 

“So where are we going?” Derek asks hopefully-nonchalantly, his feet up on the dash of Will’s truck. They’re chugging along 95N, Derek loosely holding the envelope of cash they’re using for tolls.

“Do you really want me to spoil the surprise?”

“If you’re secretly taking me to meet your family, I’d kind of like to be prepared?”

Dex scratches his nose, keeping the other hand on the wheel. “I guess I hadn’t considered that,” he muses.

“Wait—so we _are?_ Meeting your family?”

Will flicks at Derek’s ear reflexively. “No, we’re just going to Maine. We could meet my family if you want, but honestly I just wanted to show you the bluffs and the parks and all that. You like nature junk, right?”

“Yeah, but—goddammit that’s really sweet, fuck you—but how are you affording this?”

Will laughs so hard Derek’s afraid they’re going to run off the road, but he just whips a sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and shoves it in Derek’s lap.

“What is this, a check?”

“It’s my tax return.”

Derek gapes—it’s a pretty big number. “Holy shit, dude, how did you—aren’t you a dependent still? How did you get this much back?”

Will takes a deep breath, unable to keep completely calm, and Derek realizes that he’d been keeping this—whatever this was—a secret from everyone. Dex was about to out his dumb plan and get so excited about it he’d botch the delivery. _Yes, gold, beautiful gold,_ thinks Derek, relishing this moment.

“So we’re on a hockey team, right?”

“News to me.”

“Shut up. We’re on a hockey team, and sports teams are typically supported by donations at some level, right?”

“Right twice.”

“And who owns the Haus?”

Derek thinks about it—was that ever established during taddy tour? Hm. “The school?”

“It’s crazy because it’s true—a former SMH coach was also a landlord, and donated the house to the team when he retired. Meaning that every time we get fined, we’re actually—”

“—making a tax-deductible donation to the athletics department, holy shit, is _that_ why you never let me pay your fines for you?”

“I made it my final project for the accounting class I took this semester. It turned out to suck a lot less than I thought,” Dex replies with a smile. “I’m paying for this whole dumb vacation and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”

Derek chuckles and runs his fingers through Will’s scalp. “Can I at least buy you coffee?”

“I’ll allow it,” Dex murmurs as his head rocks back and forth to the tune of Nurse’s fingertips. “But stop massaging me or I might crash the car.”

**Author's Note:**

> ** #sintowin **
> 
> Next chapter will be fluffy* snapshots of their Maine vacation. When I posted this to tumblr originally, I did the epilogue in the tags, but chapter 2 will hopefully be more than thirty words, so I'm leaving the tags out for now.
> 
> (hork some prompts at my [tumbltrain](https://asbestosghost.tumblr.com/) and I'm 75% sure they'll turn into ficlets)
> 
> *but maybe smut-curious


End file.
